Nicolas Deslauriers and Tanner Jeannot dropped the gloves at 13:55 of the first period at the Lenovo Center on Tuesday, with the Carolina Hurricanes hosting the Boston Bruins in a meeting of the top two teams in the standings.
They were still throwing punches close to a minute later. Neither man went down, neither gave ground, and most accounts called it a draw.
The response was close to unanimous.
“This is why fighting exists in hockey. What a pleasure to watch,” one fan wrote.
“That was one for the ages. They are like battleships blasting each other to pieces,” said another.
A third landed on the thing that made it unusual. “It’s never really crossed my mind, but a dead even tilt like this might actually be better than a pure beatdown. Shoutout to both guys for putting on a show.”
Somebody else expected the two of them to feel the same way. “That’s one of those fights where they’re giving each other a round of applause when they get to the box. Fighters respect fighters.”
And one simply filed it under: “That was a real slobberknocker.”
The two fighters by the numbers:
| Deslauriers | Jeannot | |
|---|---|---|
| Career NHL fights | 98 | 53 |
| Games this season | 8 | 12 |
| Points this season | 3 | 3 |
How many fights has Nicolas Deslauriers had?
Very few men currently playing have done it more often. Tuesday took him to 98 for his NHL career, with Jeannot on 53, and the two of them have now met twice inside eight months, having also gone at it on February 28 when Deslauriers was with Philadelphia.
Voters at HockeyFights scored this one above eight out of ten and gave Jeannot the narrowest of edges, 52 percent to 29, with the rest calling it even.
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The fight did what Carolina needed. The Hurricanes had spent the opening period killing penalties, one of them picked up by Jeannot for hooking, and the bout lifted the building at a point where the hockey wasn’t.
Carolina won the game 2-1, holding Boston to a single goal and continuing a start that has them level at the top of the league.
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